Affiliate Programs and My Experiences

I mentioned a few months ago with the launch of FeedForAll we would be wrapping it and for the eSellerate and Digital River network (through RegNow), and I would share my experiences here. I've received a lot of questions since my mention of affiliate programs in the last newsletter so I figured it was time to share my experiences.

Initially when wrapping the files I found Bill Dickson from Digital River extremely helpful providing the needed information, but was disappointed to find that the consumer has to make 2 downloads, one being some sort of download manager. When we were wrapping our program for the eSellerate network their system was down, and while I haven't experienced any outages since then, it was a bit of a frustration. Once we gained access to the eSellerate system, I did not find it intuitive and needed assistance to figure it out. I had wanted to setup all the graphics links prior to the launch but was disappointed to find you had to make the program "live" in order to add graphics. Didn't make much sense to me. I had just wanted to flip a switch on launch day and have all the file and graphics in place.

We worked deals to have major exposure on both the Digital River network and with some of eSellerate's affiliate partners; this is where the most significant differences between the two networks were apparent. Digital River gave us prominent placement on Simtel and a popular PC site. Unfortunately we didn't have an initial high conversion and were quickly replaced by other affiliates. In the eSellerate network things were much more hands-on. I worked with Howard Sobel from WUGNET and we discussed the target audience for FeedForAll, who his audience was on the various sites they work with, and the message that would likely work. We created promotional text, shaping the message to the audience. While sales were not blockbuster, it certainly performed significantly better than that on the DR network. Howard also mentioned that time limited coupons perform well with his audience and so we gave that a try.

Denise the affiliate coordinator at eSellerate also contacted us and hooked us up with some affiliate partners in their network. I think that long term the hand-holding by WUGNET and customizing the copy to meet the needs of the audience goes a long way in creating successful affiliate relationships. The coupons performed and the things I learned in dealing with WUGNET are all things I would like to try in the DR network, as I suspect their reach is broader, but I don't know that they are structured for this sort of thing.

We are still finding that our *best* affiliates are those that are topic specific or those that provide closely related content. I believe as RSS gains momentum and popularity it will become a more consumer oriented product, making it easy for all affiliates to sell. For now we are interested in working with affiliates, to assist them in educating their audience about RSS and how FeedForAll would fit in. At this point it appears that eSellerate's network has a better handle on this than DR.
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http://www.ictks.com/links/affiliates/sport-book-affiliate.html
Originally Posted on 7/25/2005 8:42:50 AM
Content source: http://www.softwaremarketingresource.com/blog.html#v97